In the last post we featured an interview with Dr. Zhao Xiao, a prominent Beijing economist and outspoken Christian, conducted in 2008. This article, in the Gospel Times (January 2012), is a report on a talk that Zhao gave addressing the question of how China's future missionary sending movement will be supported.
An interview with economist Dr. Zhao Xiao.
The full title of this article is "How to Make the Church Chinese: Perspectives from the Religious, Academic, and Political Spheres" and is posted on the website of the China Christian Council/Three-Self Patriotic Movement (CCC/TSPM). Originally published in the official China Nationalities News, it examines the question of how Chinese the church is in China. While most Chinese Christians would likely agree that today's church is already Chinese both in character and leadership, many in the larger society have yet to acknowledge Christianity as genuinely a Chinese religion. The process of Sinicization, this writer argues, involves not only Christians themselves, but also China's intellectual and political elites.
Crossing the river by feeling the stones, a popular Chinese idiom, is a fitting way to describe Chinas emerging urban church. Its leaders have no older generation to look up to, and the opportunities and challenges they face are unprecedented in Chinas history. In this article published in the Christian Times, one pastor describes the dangers facing todays urban church leaders. He cautions them to be humble and teachable, as the decisions they make will affect an entire generation.
Last week the New York Review of Books blog published an interview of American-based Chinese pastor Yuan Zhi-ming conducted by journalist Ian Johnson. In the 1980's Yuan Zhi-ming was a documentary film-maker in China. Because of his involvement in the 1989 protest movement, he was forced to flee China, eventually ending up in the United States. He became a Christian in 1992, and started the China Soul for Christ Foundation, which produced the documentary The Cross: Jesus in China.
This is the third section of an article on the Fuyinmen (Gospel Door) website titled "Christianity Brings Western Medicine to Guangdong Province." The first two sections can be found in the previous two posts. In this third section, the reporter conducts an interview with Protestant church officials from Guangdong Province concerning the historical development of the Church in the province.
The first part of the article on the Fuyinmen (Gospel Door) website focused on western missionary work in the medical field in Guangdong. The second part of the article focuses on education and a missionary's encounter with Hong Xiuquan, who would later lead the Taiping Rebellion.
In recent years it has become more common for political and religious leaders in China to acknowledge some of the positive aspects of early foreign missionary work in China.
"Faith is not just a beautiful adornment added to our lives; it encompasses our entire lives. Truth is not a set of ideas or theories, but personal realities for which one can live and die." This article presents a detailed analysis of the challenges facing the church in todays society. It was originally posted on the Sina blog of Xing Pinghuang, and later re-posted on the Gospel Times website.
This brief eulogy recalls the life and influence of Moses Xie, a patriarch in the 20th century Chinese church who endured more than two decades of imprisonment for his refusal to cooperate with the Three Self Patriotic Movement following its formation in the early 1950s. Following his release in the early 1980s Pastor Xie became a mentor to many young leaders and at times a spokesman on behalf of Christians in China to the outside world. He passed away in June of 2011, and this was published in Church China Journal in July of 2011.
This article from the Gospel Times website in October of 2011 is about the launch of BSF (Bible Study Fellowship) in Beijing.
While much attention has been given in the West to the Chinese church's Back to Jerusalem vision, the realization of this vision has been a slow and difficult process.